Ben Affleck is a Boston boy through and through. So of course he’s passionate about his football team, the New England Patriots.
But in an appearance on sportscaster Bill Simmons’ brand-new HBO show, Any Given Wednesday, the Batman actor took his passion to new heights when he went on a five-minute expletive-laden rant about the injustice — in his eyes — of the Deflategate scandal that’s been plaguing his team and star quarterback Tom Brady, who is suspended from play for the first four games of the upcoming season.
“It’s a f–king ridiculous smear campaign,” he told Simmons. “We’re running our greatest player ever through a mill of humiliation and shame which is totally unwarranted,” he said.
“I talk to football players, f–king pro football players — across the board they think it’s bulls–t,” Affleck said. “This is a conspiracy of people working inside the NFL, who all come from organizations who Tom Brady whipped their a– over the last 10 and 15 years. So these are guys who worked for the f–king Jets, the Broncos, who are now like ‘Get him! Hang him!’ because they have some slight flimsy f–king pretense.”
Let’s just say that Affleck takes full advantage of HBO’s anything-goes policy to show us his true feelings. At least he’s not sad about Batman v Superman anymore.
The full unedited (and profane!) clip, from Any Given Wednesday‘s YouTube channel, is below.
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Write to Raisa Bruner at raisa.bruner@time.com